A Monster's Broken Wing
by redlettergirl
Summary: "We're talking about sex here, Vince, not the apocalypse. That was years ago." Mistakes, regret, and something he'll never say. Yuffentine.


"Vincent Valentine, if you don't look at me right this instant, I swear to Da-Chao that I will come over there and _m__ake_ you! And let me tell you, this bed is super comfy, so if I have to get up out of it to come knock some sense into you, I won't be happy!"

He didn't move, of course. He was too much of a stubborn loser for that. He just kept staring out the window, eyes fixed on something in the street below and not even twitching toward her. She was almost willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that there was something super-interesting down there, but then she quickly remembered that she was undeniably the most fascinating thing that could possibly be in his general vicinity, which meant he was just being a jerk.

Nothing if not a girl of her word, Yuffie untangled his cloak from the blankets (she'd been clinging to it all night, and she had a sneaking suspicion that the only reason he was still here was because he hadn't been able to pry it from her awesome ninja grip), stood, wrapped it around her to cover all the necessary parts, and marched up to him.

The first thing he did—the _fir__st thing_, the jerk!—was try to turn away, look over his shoulder, again give his attention to something infinitely less awesome than the gorgeous, deliciously nearly-nude Yuffie Kisaragi who was standing right in front of him. Ungrateful idiot.

Reaching out and resting her palm against a handful of pretty Vincent-cheek-flesh, she turned his face back toward her, putting her arm into it. Her other palm found his other cheek, framing his face nicely as the cloak around her began to unwrap and slide down.

That got his attention. Almost instantly his hands shot out, holding the smelly, torn up stretch of red fabric against her sides to keep it from falling off. Though she couldn't exactly complain about having his hands on her (if she tilted just a _littl__e bit_ to the left, she might be able to make things more interesting), Yuffie still rolled her eyes and heaved a sigh.

The look he gave her—one of those glary old man expressions that would have worked much better on him if he'd actually looked as old as he was—probably could have melted a hole through some of the lesser metals. "You're taking this situation too lightly, Yuffie."

"What's to take lightly?" she said, letting go of his face and practically pirouetting out of his grasp (oh yes; Yuffie Kisaragi: maven of grace), giggling with a mix of glee, triumph, and wicked warrior strife. "We're talking about sex here, Vince, not the apocalypse. That was years ago."

She saw him flinch at that one. The unshakable, unbreakable Vincent Valentine, spazzing out over _sex_. She knew he was a prude, but _seriously_.

"Oh, come on!" she huffed. "It wasn't that bad!"

"It was a mistake," he replied, glaring at her a moment longer before looking back out the window.

"What!" There were no words, even in Wutaian, to describe how not cool that was, and Wutaian had a lot of dirty words. "Now you're just being a jerk!"

"It was a lapse in judgment," he went on, voice as pinched as Tifa's butt on a Saturday night. "I acted inappropriately. I apologize."

"Ha!" She flung one arm up, nearly making the cloak go flying (and making him jump the _tiniest bit_, which felt good; even if he was technically looking away, she still had his attention). "If that's the kind of thing you apologize for—!"

"Yuffie—"

"Seriously, Vince," she took a step forward, puffing herself up the same way she'd been trained to deal with things—or people—that were bigger than her, "what is your problem? I didn't hear you complaining _befo__re_."

Okay, so maybe that was a little mean, and maybe she felt the_ littlest_ bit guilty when he stiffened even more and set his jaw. Plus, that weird _what-have-I-done-I-am-the-monster_ shame was practically radiating off of him, and she could feel her insides getting all twisted up at the sight of it. Still, she quickly got back on guard (for one instant, she was glad he was looking out the window, or he might have seen her lose face, and Yuffie Kisaragi _never_ lost face). No matter what she said, he was totally still being dumb.

"It should not have happened," he answered, all kinds of forcefully controlled. "I am sorry, Yuffie."

That little bit of stupid required a good amount of angry-Yuffie huffing. "Why are you always apologizing like that?" She didn't even bother standing back anymore, just stomped right up to him and got as relatively in his face as she could while he _still wouldn't look at her_. Planting her feet so hard that she probably lessened the whole place's structural integrity, she folded her arms all imposing-like across her chest, and put on her serious face. "I wanted it."

His jaw tightened.

"And so did you."

Dead silence. Inside-a-coffin silence. It felt like someone had cast gravity on the whole freaking room.

Tucking the edge of the cloak into the back so it wouldn't use this Serious Moment to go sliding off, she reached over to him, dragged one of his arms off the windowsill and pulled the other out of his lap. Pressing her nimble ninja fingers around his part-skin, part-metal man-hands (and _oh__mygod_ she almost couldn't keep her mean face on because she was having the best flashback ever about those hands!), she held tight, making sure he couldn't get away. He kind of had to look at her at that point to avoid looking like a giant five-year-old (or getting a crick in his old-man neck). "And it was good, wasn't it?"

He didn't answer. He was probably trying to figure out which option was worse.

"Well, whatever. Even if it _wasn't_, we still have plenty of time to get better. I mean, you're thirty years out of practice, and I'm kind of rusty myself—"

"No."

If the room had felt muggy before (and it had, all sticky and thick, like their anger-vibes had turned the air to mud), that was the flash of bright white heat that left the whole place choky dry. For her part, Yuffie couldn't help but feel like she'd taken a blast from the business end of an airship exhaust pipe. "Huh?"

In place of a real person answer, Vincent just looked at her with a sort of hardcore ex-Turk-stern expression that must have been hiding in all that angst he was flashing a minute ago.

"There you go again!" Yuffie hollered, all kinds of exasperated, while inside her heart started beating around like some little Yuffie-monster that could sense what was about to happen to it and had damn good survival instincts. "Why?"

He kept right on staring at her, mustering up as much ominous and pointed and a-little-bit-scary as he could and focusing it all right into his eyes, forced it right into her brain. One big fat warning about a million different things—everything that wouldn't work, didn't fit, had been broken too long to get fixed and no one had the right parts anymore anyway—shot out through bright red eyes in the dead silence of that crappy little hotel room (it tried; they all tried). He promised wrong. It was all going to be _w__rong_, and that, Yuffie Kisaragi, was _w__hy_.

He was just as scary as he thought he was, but it wasn't because of what was in his eyes.

Answering his gaze with one big scoff, she leaned in, glaring right back at him. "You, Vincent Valentine, are an idiot."

There was a tiny, cruel part of her that kissed him out of spite, for the feeling of triumph when she broke that big, dumb, angsty-ominous gaze of his and replaced it with wide-eyed shock. The bigger part of her didn't need a reason.

She was on him ninja-quick, crawling up into his lap like a little girl begging her dad for a story or something equally critical to her existence (but, given the circumstances, Yuffie quickly decided to put that comparison to bed; it made her think of Godo, and thinking of Godo while naked was a one-way ticket to a decimated sex drive). He ripped his hands out of hers in half an instant and clamped onto her waist, doing everything possible to hold her away. Rolling her eyes (and immediately wishing she'd saved it for when he could actually _se__e_, because she didn't doubt for a second that its epicness would have had a Mr. Vinny Valentine immediately seeing the error of his ways and offering to take that cloak off her "hands"), she pulled back, stubbornly planted her knees on either side of his hips, and folded her arms over her chest for good measure.

He didn't look happy. In fact, he looked more not-happy than he had all morning, and was giving her an ex(tra)-special-Shinra-thug glare that he'd probably used back in the day to explode the heads of people the boss-man didn't like. "_Yuff__ie_—"

She kissed him again. He clearly needed more help snapping out of it.

"Better?" she asked, cheery smile fronting for her own super special, warrior-heiress-of-Wutai-and-all-that mini-glare. It offset his death glower pretty well if she did say so herself, especially because his was now the tiniest bit weaker, shakier, his previously rock-hard certainty whittling away. All of a sudden, his eyes were like steel over water, because she was right there, in his hands, and he knew as well as she did just how naked she was under that cloak.

She held his eyes as she leaned forward, shut her own tightly when she kissed him one more time. He still smelled like the Seventh Heaven, like a wild night of the whole gang celebrating his alive-ness—he'd decided to be the spoilsport and not drink himself stupid, while Miss Awesome Kisaragi herself got cut off after three because of what happened _l__ast time_. Then, there was that musky smell of getting him to walk her back to her hotel (Reeve had put her up there after it had become clear that, one, Mr. Valentine was going to be taking his sweet time coming back to them, and two, after three weeks of her camping out at the Seventh Heaven, Cloud was ready to decapitate her), and dragging him up to her room to make him try this new kind of tea she'd bought in Junon.

And below that was the straight-up Vincent Valentine smell, of dirt and monster guts and mako tube goo and shame, which wouldn't ever come out because he—they all—had fought too hard for too long. That was okay, though. Yuffie Kisaragi had grown up in the mud, and in her humble opinion, monster guts and grime were the best smells in the world.

His hands twitched. Just a little, just the ittiest, bittiest bit, so only a ninja of her caliber would've been able to pick it up. Suddenly, his fingertips weren't digging into her poor, abused back anymore, and though it wasn't much, she could still feel the little Yuffie-monster inside her flail with excitement, doing twirls inside her ribcage.

Scraping her knees against the completely inconvenient chair arms, she curled up even closer, right up against him (he let her, _ha__haha_ he let her!), and his hands were that much looser.

And she swore—she could feel it, and the Yuffie-monster was _singing_—there was slightest, voluntary movement of his lips—

Then his grip tightened and he lifted her like a toy, a child. He got up, stood her on her scrawny Yuffie-legs—didn't look at her, couldn't look at her—and turned away. Then he was gone, and that crappy little motel door was creaking like it was laughing at the girl still inside the room, all naked under a dirty cloak.

She stood there for a second, all open-mouthed dumb and chilly turkey limbs—there was a hell of a breeze coming in from that hallway. She stepped back and landed on her butt on the squishy mattress, crawled under the blankets and pulled the cloak around her tight (she felt a bit bad for it; apparently, it wasn't worth sticking around for). The Yuffie-monster had a broken wing. Slowly, she breathed in, letting out a deep, long-suffering sigh.

He'd be back. No matter what he thought, the world wasn't that wrong.


End file.
